I interrupted your serenity.”
“Not a problem.” He flashed another upbeat glance her way. “Glad I could help.”
A comforting warmth settled over her. Then, realizing her error, she sat straighter in the seat. She wouldn’t succumb to Lucas’s charm. She’d been involved with one man too many. No reason to let herself make another mistake.
Lucas might be good-looking, but handsome men could break a girl’s heart. She knew that too well. She had the scars to prove it. Not physical but emotional.
She’d built a wall around her heart. Unfortunately, she’d allowed someone entry and learned a very painful lesson that had forced her into seclusion over the last six weeks. Using a prepaid burner phone with a new number and changing her email address so he couldn’t reach her had been good decisions. Moving to Macon and starting over had been a bit more difficult. Along with making a new life for herself, she’d fortified that wall around her heart even more. No one could find a way in.
Not even an almost-Amish guy with a killer smile.
* * *
Lucas tensed. His eyes locked on the rearview mirror and a muscle twitched in his neck.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asked.
“Headlights, coming this way. Looks like it could be an SUV.”
“A black Tahoe?” she asked, rubbing her hands over her arms.
“I can’t be sure of the make and model nor the color, but I don’t want to take any chances.” He glanced at the temperature gauge. “We can try to outrace the vehicle or hole up someplace and wait until it passes.”
“What about the leak in the radiator?”
“You’ve got more water. We can refill if need be.” Although putting extra stress on the car wasn’t a good option.
Grateful when a narrow dirt roadway came into view, Lucas turned onto the path, guided the car behind an expanse of pine trees and cut the engine. “Hopefully we won’t be seen.”
“I’d like a little more reassurance.” She tugged at a strand of her wet hair and stared through the trees at the all-too-close roadway. “What if it’s the guy who came after me and he spots us?”
“Then we’ll go to plan B.”
Her eyes widened. “Is there a plan B?”
“Not yet, but we’ll handle that problem when it arises.”
As much as he wanted to make light of a very serious situation, Lucas knew cars on the mountain road were few and far between. Not that he would share that bit of information with Hannah. She was anxious enough.
“By the way, thank you for coming to my aid,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
He glanced at her for a long moment and then turned his gaze back to the road. “My mama taught me to be a gentleman, and gentlemen don’t leave ladies at the top of their deer stands.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders visibly relax. She let out an almost-inaudible sigh of relief. As her tension seemed to ease, a tightness constricted Lucas’s chest and sent a pulse of heat up his neck. He didn’t have medical training but he doubted the reaction had any physical basis, and that worried him. Who was Hannah Miller and what was she doing to his peace of mind?
As the SUV passed, she touched his arm. “It looks like the Tahoe from the gas station. I told you, he had headed for the highway, yet when I broke down, his was the first car to happen by.”
“The guy must have known you’d be stranded on the side of the road,” Lucas said. “Did you lock your car when you went into the station?”
She thought back. “I had gotten out expecting to pay at the pump, then realized I needed to pay the attendant. I left the car unlocked.”
“Which means he could have jabbed the hole in your radiator.”
“Except I’d been driving for hours. The engine was still hot. Wouldn’t steam and water spray out?”
“He could have worn insulated gloves to protect his hands. If he closed your hood before you returned to your car, you wouldn’t have noticed the problem.”
She nodded and stared into the night. “I went to the ladies’ room, which gave him ample time.”
“Did anyone tail you on the highway?”
“Not that I noticed.”
Had the guy taken advantage of a woman driving along an isolated road late at night or was Hannah a known target?
“A pretty woman on a desolate back road...” Lucas didn’t need to finish the thought.
Hannah leaned closer. “Did you hear about a mountain hijacking that ended with an older woman dead and two younger women captured?”
The question took Lucas by surprise. “How does that involve you?”
Maybe Hannah was a marked woman after all.
“The murdered woman was Leah Miller.”
“You’re related?”
Hannah nodded. “She was my mother. My younger sister Sarah was taken. Another sister, Miriam, was supposed to have found refuge with an Amish family named Zook. Do you know them?”
“That’s a common name around these parts. Do you have first names?”
“Unfortunately, that’s all the information I could decipher from the garbled voice mail Miriam left on my cell. The guy in the flannel shirt who came after me mentioned her name. He wanted to know where she’s holed up.”
“We need to talk to the deputy sheriff and learn more about the hijacking. Maybe he’ll know the Zooks and how to find your sister.”
Maybe he would know about Hannah Miller, as well. She’d gone from being a stranded motorist with a guy on her tail to a person of interest in a murder and kidnapping case. Lucas had distanced himself from law enforcement, yet crime and corruption seemed to have found him in the middle of the North Georgia mountains, which was both ironic and unsettling.
Reason told him to give Hannah a wide berth, but he couldn’t walk away from a woman in need. Especially a woman whose circumstances tugged at his heart.
“Stay in the car,” he said, opening the driver’s door. “I’ll add more water and then we’ll be on our way. There’s a fork in the road not far ahead. Just like the previous intersection, the fork to the left goes to Willkommen. We’ll veer right toward the Amish Inn. Chances are good the car that just passed us is headed to town.”
Lucas refilled the radiator, crawled back into the car, started the engine and pulled out onto the road. The rain eased, but the overhanging trees and thick underbrush that lined the road hung heavy with moisture. The headlights cut a path into the dark night.
As
